Hi all,
Looking at our photos from the Ulladulla trip today and Mick's photo
(congratulations, Mick!!!), I believe that the NZ Stormies were two different
birds.
Other goodies of the Ulladulla trip were White Terns, Brown Noddie, Red-footed
Booby, White-tailed
Tropicbird, Gould's Petrels, Kermadec Petrels, four dolphin
species (including Spinner and Pantropical Spotted), False Killer Whale, and
Sperm Whale!
Cheers,
Nikolas (and all the other great birders on board, who are most likely asleep
by now)
----------------
Nikolas Haass
Sydney, NSW
----- Original Message ----
From: Laurie Knight <>
To: Mick Roderick <>
Cc: Birding Aus <>
Sent: Mon, March 29, 2010 11:18:10 PM
Subject: New Zealand Storm-petrel seen off Port Stephens, NSW (and 2nd record
already)
Thanks Mick.
According to Google Earth, Port Stephens to Ulladulla is about 330 km [the
distance between the sightings will be a bit different]. A bird travelling
that distance in 20 hours would need to average about 15 km/hr. Which way was
the wind blowing?
Regards, Laurie.
On 29/03/2010, at 4:29 PM, Mick Roderick wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> A bird that was almost certainly a New Zealand Storm-petrel was seen by 12
> observers on a pelagic trip that I ran off Port Stephens yesterday. We all
> had good to reasonable views of the bird, which was seen just to the north of
> 32 57 10 / 152 36 35 (sorry, no GPS co-ordinates were taken at the time of
> the observation but it would have been very close to this point, less than a
> nautical mile anyway) at about 1215 yesterday afternoon.
>
> Without going into too much detail about the bird, it clearly possessed all
> of the distinguishing features of a NZ Storm-petrel, most notably the dark
> "streaked" markings on the belly and flanks. Also distinguishing the bird
> from Fregetta Storm-petrels were the size, projection of legs beyond the
> tail, the amount of white on the rump and behaviour (jizz was similar to
> Wilson's which were around the boat also). Images can be seen at
> http://s178.photobucket.com/albums/w248/Brewerbackpacker/New%20Zealand%20Storm-petrel%20Port%20Stephens%2028-03-10/
> - I hope the link works.
>
> Myself and Allan Richardson have been trawling through all of the available
> information and it appears that there is little doubt in the identification
> of the bird as a New Zealand Storm-petrel. This I believe would be a first
> for Australia.
>
> But get this - I was contacted by Dan Mantle just a few hours ago. Dan is
> currently aboard the SOSSA Deep Sea pelagic trip off Ulladulla. Remarkably,
> they had a NZ Stormy around their boat at about 0900 this morning! Their
> observation was about 10nm east of the shelf. They had excellent views and
> have better photographs than our bird (which never really came within 40 or
> 50m of the boat). So we have a probable Australian first and then the second
> record the following day!
>
> The chances of this being the same bird as ours are likely to be quite remote
> (happy to be proven wrong). Perhaps there are some birds "moving through"
> with the Wilson's Storm-petrels, or got "caught up" with them? Wilson's are
> in good numbers at the moment - we had about 40 around the boat at one stage
> and Dan informs me that the deep sea trip had 100+ at one point. Clearly we
> know extremely little about anything to do with NZ Stormies, let alone what
> their movements etc might be, but with 2 records off the NSW central / south
> coasts in 24 hours, it may not be a ridiculous suggestion that the species
> could be targeted at the moment. I can provide contact details for a boat
> that can run off Port Stephens if people are that keen!
>
> Full trip reports will follow for the double-header pelagics that I ran off
> Port Stephens on the weekend. And what an amazing weekend it was. Apart from
> the NZ Stormy, we also had a Common Noddy and one, maybe 2 Gould's Petrels
> yesterday (and about 60-80 Wilson's SP), and on Saturday we had a
> White-bellied Storm-petrel, Tahiti Petrel, 2 Streaked Shearwaters and became
> what surely must be the first pelagic trip to record both Brown and
> Red-footed Boobies on the same day off NSW.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Mick Roderick
>
>
>
>
> www.birding-aus.org
> birding-aus.blogspot.com
>
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